From the Editor (winter 2015)
Water and humans: two powerful forces shaping our landscapes. Take a flight from Denver or Billings into some small western farming town to see the extent.
The West’s Water
Photo Essay
Water, or perhaps the absence of water, defines the Wyoming landscape and shapes the species that live on it. Big sagebrush (Artemesia tridentata) is one species particularly well adapted to Wyoming’s arid climate.
One Irrigator’s Waste is Another’s Supply
Upstream Efficiencies Mean Less Water For Downstream Users in Nebraska’s Panhandle
On a warm summer morning in western Nebraska, 77-year-old farmer Bob Busch stood next to a sugar beet field in a worn denim shirt
Measuring Return Flows
This story is a sidebar to One Irrigator’s Waste is Another’s Supply: Upstream Efficiencies Mean Less Water for Downstream Users in Nebraska’s Panhandle.
As a child in northeastern Wyoming, I remember my summers as irrigation season.
Supercomputer-Powered Model Improves Water Planning
A Hi-Resolution Hydrologic Model Peers into the Future of Western Water
Inside the University of Wyoming’s 3-D visualization cave, winter is coming.
Dust on Snow
A Dirty Mountain Snow Pack Affects Communities Downstream
This story is a sidebar to Supercomputer-Powered Model Improves Water Planning: A Hi-Resolution Hydrologic Model Peers into the Future of Western Water.
Aquifer Recharge
Underground Storage Could Help Cities Sustain Water Supplies
In 2009 Lytle Water Solutions, LLC, a geology consulting firm, constructed a small, rectangular basin in a groundwater well field outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The Great Water Transfer
Diverting Water from Basin to Basin
In the summer of 1860, farmers in central Colorado found Left Hand Creek dry.[1] They started looking for replacement water.
Finding Teton Glacier
My partner Matt and I left the Lupine Meadows parking lot in Grand Teton National Park at sunrise, his long stride covering miles quickly, my short stride moving fast to keep up.
Beaver Dreams
The Rancher Who Wished for a Beaver
“They’re really beneficial, to get the shrubs in, get the water up.”
Wyoming Conservation Exchange
New Marketplace Will Reward Wyoming Ranchers for Conserving Sage Grouse Habitat
The Upper Green River Basin of Wyoming, at the headwaters of the Colorado River, is laced with clear running streams and fosters abundant habitat and some of the most robust greater sage grouse, mule deer, and pronghorn populations in the world.
Sagebrush Recovers at Oil and Gas Wells
Other Species Do Not
“The most important questions have to do with the long-term behavior of systems,” says Indy Burke, University of Wyoming ecologist. The system she’s talking about, in this case, is western landscapes.
Healing Sick Rivers
Encampment River Case Study
A front loader picks up massive boulders as if they are pebbles. A bulldozer shoves rocks into a mound. High-pitched beeps ebb and flow as the machinery works back and forth.
Public Opinion on Natural Resource Conservation in Wyoming
A recent statewide poll of Wyoming voters documented a strong interest in conservation and support for dedicating additional state funds to protect land, air, water, wildlife habitat, and ranchlands in the state.
Essay: Ba’a
Water is Life
I was fortunate to grow up on the banks of Trout Creek, one of the many streams winding its way out of the Wind River Mountains onto mile-high flatlands and eventually to the lower elevations of the Big Wind River, if you consider 4,000 to 5,000 feet to be low.
